Honey Moon (57 page)

crying herself. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I really am."

Rachel shook off her sympathy. "It's because of you, isn't it? The two of you had a fight."

"Not a fight. It's hard to explain."

"I'm not going! He said he'd give us a special treat to make up for leaving, but I don't want a special treat. I want to ride Black Thunder."

"Rachel, he's your father, and you have to do what he tells you."

"You're damn right she does!" Eric's voice rang out from behind them. "Get over here right now, young lady."

He strode angrily through the trees with Becca in his arms. When he reached the clearing, he set her on the ground and then straightened to glare at his other daughter.

Rachel glared right back, her small body unconsciously arranging itself in imitation of his, legs splayed, arms tense at her sides.

"No!" she shouted. "I'm not going to the airport with you! I don't like you!"

"That's tough. Get over here."

Honey's heart constricted in her chest. She saw by the exhaustion in his face that he had reached his limit. She wanted to plead with him not to leave, but she had no right. Why did he have to be so stubborn? Why did he insist on putting her to the test? But even as she asked herself the questions, she knew he had every right to expect all those things that she wasn't yet able to give.

"Now!" Eric bellowed.

Rachel began to cry, but she didn't move.

Honey took a half step forward, gripped by a sudden and unshakable certainty that Eric was wrong not

to let Rachel ride Black Thunder. She forgot that she had no real connection to this child. She felt as if Rachel had come from her own body.

And at that moment, she knew what she had to do.

She grasped Rachel's hand and gazed over at Eric. "She has to ride Black Thunder first."

"The hell she does!"

"Don't stop her, Eric." Her voice dropped to a whisper, pleading. "Let her ride it for me. For herself."

All the angry tension seeped from his body, leaving him looking old and exhausted, a man who had

fought one too many battles. "She's too young, Honey. She's only a baby."

Rachel's mouth snapped open to voice an indignant protest, but Honey squeezed her hand in a warning

to be silent.

"She has to do this, Eric."

"I don't want her frightened."

"She's already been frightened. Her grandfather took care of that."

Turning her back to him, she knelt in front of Rachel. "I was just your age when I rode Black Thunder for the first time, and I was more frightened than I've ever been in my life. This ride is fierce. It wasn't designed for young children, sweetheart. The first drop is worse than any horror movie. You're so small that you'll come right off the seat, and the tops of your legs will slam against the lap bar. When you hit

the spiral, you'll feel as if you're going to be sucked straight down to the bottom of the lake. It's going to scare you to death."

"Not me," Rachel scoffed. "I wouldn't be scared."

Honey gently cupped her cheek. "Yes, you will."

"You rode it."

"My uncle made me."

"Was he bad like my Grandpa Guy?"

"No, not like that. He just didn't like little kids very much."

"Did you cry?"

"I was too scared to cry. The train took me to the top of the lift hill, and when I saw how far it was down, I thought I was going to die."

"Like when Grandpa Guy squished on top of me."

Honey nodded. "Just like that."

"I want to ride," Rachel said stubbornly.

"Are you absolutely sure?"

Rachel nodded, and then her eyes began devouring the coaster with an intensity that Honey understood

all too well. Both she and Rachel knew what it was to feel defenseless in the world. They knew that women had to find courage in different places from men. Without looking at Honey or her father,

Rachel broke away and ran to the station house.

"Rachel!" Eric rushed forward, but Honey threw herself at him.

"Please, Eric! This is something she has to do."

He looked at her, his eyes defeated, full of pain. "I don't understand any of this."

"I know you don't," she whispered, finally allowing the full force of her love for him to rush over her. "You're big and you're strong, and you see life differently."

"I'm going with her."

"No, Eric. You can't. She has to do this alone." She looked up into his eyes, straight through into his

soul, begging him to trust her. "Please."

Finally he nodded, the movement so full of reluctance that she knew what it had cost him and loved

him all the more for it. "All right," he said. "All right."

She drew him toward the station house, and they passed beneath Gordon Delaweese's painting. Rachel had climbed into the first car, and her face was animated with a combination of excitement and apprehension. At the same time, she looked incredibly small and defenseless in the empty train.

Honey's hand trembled as she checked to make certain Rachel was secure under the lap bar. "It's not

too late to get out."

Rachel shook her head.

Leaning down, Honey kissed her forehead. "When you're done," she whispered,

"the nightmares will

be gone forever."

Honey wasn't even certain if Rachel had heard. Her small fingers were white as they gripped the bar,

and Honey saw that her excitement had been replaced with fear. Which was exactly as it should be.

She stepped back from the train to stand at Eric's side. Tension radiated from him, and she could sense the force of will he was exerting to hold himself back.

Rachel was his most precious possession. She knew he didn't understand, and she was humbled at his trust in her.

She turned toward Tony, who was waiting at the control board, oblivious to the drama that was being played out before him. Then she nodded.

She and Eric rushed out from under the roof of the station house in time to watch the train begin its

climb up the great lift hill. Behind them, Becca sat cross-legged in the grass watching her sister. Rachel's bright pink sweatshirt made her highly visible at the front of the long train of empty cars.

Ride it for me, sweetheart,
she thought.
Set me free, too.

Eric slipped his hand into hers. His fingers were cold, and she gripped them tightly. She could feel Rachel's terror in her own body as the car ground relentlessly toward the top of the hill. Her heart began to race, and she was perspiring. When Rachel reached the top and saw the drop, she would once again

be forced to face her grandfather.

The car hung suspended at the apex of the hill, and Honey went rigid with fear, a fear that she knew was her own as much as Rachel's. And then as the train plunged down the drop and swooped into the second hill, she understood it all.

She saw that she was Rachel and that Dash was her. That people who loved were always part of each other. She saw that her love for Dash didn't prevent her from loving Eric. Instead, it made it possible.

A joyous sunburst opened inside her. She turned to Eric. His face was tense with concern as his eyes followed the racing pink blur that was his daughter, fearing that she would try to stand, that she would fall out, that the coaster he had helped build would not carry her safely back to him. But Black Thunder did not desert those it sheltered anymore than God did, not even in the darkest of hours.

Honey's own fear had left her, and she understood how simple her love for Eric was. It held no dark corners, no psychological complexities. He was not a father to her. He wasn't her superior or her teacher. He didn't possess a lifetime of experiences of which she knew nothing. Eric was simply Eric. A man who had come into the world with too much feeling. A man who was as vulnerable as she, as needful of love.

She wanted to laugh and sing and enfold him in the universe of her love. He began to run, and she realized the train had cleared the spiral over the lake and was speeding back to the station. She followed him beneath the roof, her heart dancing.

The train screeched into the station. Rachel's face was stark white, her hands frozen around the bar, all her defiance gone.

Eric ran to her, and as the train braked to a stop, he reached out. "Baby ..."

"Again," Rachel whispered.

"Yes!"
Honey shouted out the word. Laughing, she threw herself at Eric. "Oh, yes, my love. Yes!"

The train left the station with Rachel Dillon in its front seat while Eric held Honey in his arms and felt those soft, full lips claiming his own.

At that moment he gave up trying to understand the drama these females he loved were playing out. Maybe women were even more different from men than he had assumed. Maybe they had to find the courage to face life in a different way.

Honey had smeared herself against him almost as if she were trying to inject herself into his body. Her mouth opened under his, and he knew that she was offering him all of her love, her loyalty, all the

passion with which she attacked life. This woman who occupied his soul was giving him everything.

And at that moment the jealousy he felt toward Dash Coogan slipped away forever.

"I love you!" Honey said against his lips. "Oh, Eric, I love you so much."

He groaned her name and lost himself in her mouth. They kissed while Rachel left her nightmares

behind on the hills of Black Thunder.

"I think I've been waiting for you forever," he murmured.

"Do you still want to marry me?" she asked.

"Oh, yes."

"I want a baby."

"Do you? I'm glad."

"Oh, Eric . . . This is right. I finally know this is right."

He couldn't get enough of her mouth. It was sweet and rich, promising him love and abundance. It

carried him through space, through time, into a place where only good existed.

And as he settled into

that miraculous place he heard a rough, weary voice, so deep it could have come from God's belly.

It's about time you took what was yours, pretty boy. I was just about ready to
lose patience with you.

Startled, he drew back from her. Her eyes, still drugged from their kiss, opened and she looked at him quizzically. Feeling foolish, he reclaimed that sweet, soft mouth.

The train raced by and, for a few moments, all of them touched eternity.

Epilogue

1993

Honey located Eric and the girls through the glare of lights and the flash of strobes. As the applause

finally quieted, she stepped to the Plexiglass podium and gazed down at the gold Emmy that had been placed in her hands.

"Thank you so much." Her voice cracked and the audience laughed. She laughed with them and leaned closer to the microphone.

"If anybody had ever told me that a puny little redneck girl from South Carolina could end up with one

of these, I would have told them they'd been out in the sun too long."

More laughter.

"I've got a lot of people to thank, so I hope all of you will be patient with me for a minute." She began

her list with Arthur Lockwood and then went on to name the people associated with
Emily
, the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation on the life of Emily Dickinson that had earned her the award.

The gold lace skirt of her evening gown rustled as it brushed against the podium. "But most of all I have to thank my family. Families are funny things.

People who have them don't always appreciate them. But if you've grown up without one, it's sometimes hard to find your place in the world.

"Tonight I want to acknowledge my family. It took me a long time to find them, but now that I have,

I'm not letting a single one of them go. My stepdaughters Rachel and Rebecca Dillon, and their beautiful mother Lilly who shares them with me. Zachary Jason Dashwell Dillon who'll be two years old tomorrow and is the cutest toddler in the world. His baby brother Andrew, who's waiting in the greenroom right

now for me to stop talking and bring him his next meal."

Everyone laughed.

"Two people I love in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Chantal and Gordon Delaweese. A person I'm proud to call my friend, although it took us a while to get there— Meredith Coogan Blackman. And Liz Castleberry, the stubbornest lady I ever met in my life."

Liz smiled from her seat directly behind Eric.

"One person I love isn't here tonight, at least not physically." She paused, and a stillness fell over the crowd. "Dash Coogan was the last of America's cowboy heroes, and he was my hero, too. He taught

me a lot of things. Sometimes I listened to him, sometimes I didn't. When I didn't, I was usually sorry."

She saw several people in the audience dab at their eyes, but she had made peace with Dash's death that day three years ago when Rachel had ridden Black Thunder, and she didn't feel like crying. Instead, she smiled. "I loved that cowboy, and I'll be grateful to him for the rest of my life."

She cleared her throat. "This last one's hard. Marriage is always a balancing act, and it's never a good

idea for one partner to get too big a head, but I'm afraid that's what's going to happen here. People write

a lot of things about Eric Dillon's talent, and most of it's true. But nobody writes about the important things. The fact that he's a wonderful father and the best husband a woman could have. The fact that

he cares about other people so much that he sometimes scares me. That doesn't mean he's perfect, of course. It's hard living with a man who's prettier than all of your girlfriends put together."

Eric groaned good-naturedly as everyone laughed.

Honey gazed through the lights straight into his heart. "But if it weren't for Eric Dillon, I wouldn't be

here tonight. He loved me when I wasn't lovable, and I guess when it comes right down to it, that's

pretty much what family is all about. Thank you, sweetheart."

Eric watched from the second row, his chest so filled with love and pride he felt as if he would burst.